soul-sized life

What are the dimensions of your soul? How far can she throw her light? How many close relationships do you have the capacity to honor?

How much art will you render? How many stories will be yours to tell? How many friends will you help to discover their own souls?

As I ask questions like these of myself, the tendency is to swing between overestimating and underestimating the size of my soul. Maybe the oscillation between big and small is what keeps me bending back toward a sane assessment.

For more on this topic, see the post inhabiting littleness, and the comments that followed.

Inhabiting Littleness

I can only be this person, in this place, in these relationships...

Finite, temporal, limited...

I have instant access to the most superlative instances on the planet of anything I might attempt in my local sphere. So my efforts will necessarily pale in comparison unless I am the very best in the world.

Frankly, this does not inspire me; it freezes me. It could be because I’ve lost touch with the parameters of my own given context. I have misinterpreted my world as the world, which is far too expansive a playground for me.

Somehow, I have to rediscover the wonder of the littleness of my life. I must inhabit my actual sphere of influence (as opposed to the global sphere visible to me via the 12-inch screen of the iBook I’m using to type these words).

It is another facet of presence: to be here, fully incarnated and engaged within the littleness of my life.